


The Third Way to Wisdom

by Jadesfire



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Stream (Critical Role), literal dungeons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 07:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9874304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire
Summary: There have been altogether too many dungeons in Percy's life. Mostly what he's learned is that they are best when they've been escaped from.





	

* * *

On the second day, he thought the filthy air was going to kill him. Wrapping his coat sleeve over his nose and mouth did little against it, every breath tasting of death and rot. Even with his back to the cell next door, he couldn't escape the smell of the bodies. He tried not to move too much, to avoid dislodging the cloth over his face or rattling the chains that held him to the wall. Anything to keep this awful place from seeping yet further into his soul.

On the fifth day, the smell no longer bothered him. The taste of his own blood in his mouth was overpowering and he'd been down here long enough that at least some of the stench was his own. Under his tattered shirt, a couple of the long gashes were infected and a distant, detached part of his brain wondered if he'd notice if they started to putrefy. Probably not.

On the sixth day, he wasn't really aware even of the blood. Darkness drifted in and out of his mind, one moment threatening to consume him, the next plunging him back into the conscious world of pain and coldness. He'd been so determined not to say anything at first. So sure that, no matter what, he would stay silent. His throat was raw enough that he thought he must have been screaming, but right now, he'd be pressed to remember his own name.

"Percival."

The word was a hissed whisper, but painfully loud in the silent dungeon. It startled him, the darkness fleeing for a moment and letting the pain wash back in. His voice could barely manage a low moan, although even that echoed around the room.

There was a flash and a crack, and suddenly someone was pulling at him, trying to get him to sit up. After the last few days, his instinct was to resist, to try to fight back somehow.

"...ridiculous. I wouldn't put it past you to choke on this, you..." 

Something cold and hard pressed against his mouth, and there was a touch of a liquid on his lips. It made them tingle, and he opened his mouth instinctively, recognising the potion for what it was. The figure over him helped him sit up against the wall, and he finally managed to get his eyes open and focussed. He'd guessed from the voice that his rescuer was female, but she was wearing a long cloak, the hood pulled up over her hair and hanging down over her face so he couldn't see anything but dark cloth. 

For a second, he panicked and tried to reach for the hood, needing to see her. The voice had been different to the one that had hounded him for the last four days, but he needed to know.

"Percival, stop it." She looked up at him, pushing the hood out of her eyes where he'd tugged it in his panic. There was a long smudge of dirt on her cheek, and her eyes were red-rimmed, and for a second, Percival was sure he had to be hallucinating. 

"Cassie?"

She grimaced. "Don't call me that, _Percy_. Not when I'm trying to get these off you."

Percival tipped his head back, the cold stone against his skin helping to ground him again. As his eyes focussed better in the dark, he saw the bundle of dark cloth by the door and what looked like a heavy knapsack. Cassandra always thought of everything.

"How did you open the door?" His voice was a wreck, which was probably just as well. The crack of the shattering metal had been quite loud enough.

Cassandra snorted, bending her head again to look at his manacles. "Some of that black powder of yours. I see why you like it. Hold still!" He'd jerked away instinctively at her words.

"I want to get out of here, but I need my hands."

She gave him a look, and settled back enough that he could see the lock picks she was trying to use to open the chains. "I'm not an idiot, Percival. But I'm also no thief."

They were his picks, made on a whim when he'd been taking apart every lock in the castle to see how they worked. When she offered them to him, he shook his head, holding out the hand she wasn't trying to free. It was shaking badly enough to rattle the chain.

"What happened to you?" Cassandra asked, making another assault on the lock.

"Ripley." 

She didn't stop, but he felt the pick inside the lock slip for a second. "What does she want?"

"Everything." Every thought, every idea, every plan. The secret of black powder. How the ballista on the south bastion worked. The drawbridge mechanism he'd been working on. All the things that she suspected were in his head and not in his notes. He didn't even know how much he'd told her.

With a click and a muffled exclamation of triumph, Cassandra shoved the manacle off one wrist and reached for his other. "We don't have long," she said. "Someone may wonder what the noise was."

"How did you get past the guards?" Thinking was becoming easier, the healing potion she'd poured into him bringing him back into his own body. Given the last few days, that wasn't necessarily an improvement.

With her hood down and all her concentration on his manacles, she sounded distracted as she said, "I set your room on fire." 

"Oh." 

"Sorry." She looked up, her smile one of apology and satisfaction as the second chain fell free. "Can you walk?"

He could, as it turned out, which came as something of a surprise, although he needed to hang onto the bars of the cell after three steps just to stay upright. Cassandra cursed under her breath and went rummaging in the bag again.

"We should save these but we need to move."

The second potion went down as easily as the first, and Percival let the bars take his weight a little as they waited for it take effect. He reached out with his free hand, still shaking, and pressed it to Cassandra's cheek. Despite the comfort of feeling her warm skin against his cold hand, he forced himself to think, not to feel. Emotions could come later. Survival came first.

"You're real, aren't you?" he asked, and she frowned, pulling away a little. Then she smiled ruefully, apparently catching his meaning. 

Pushing back her hood so he could see her properly, she leaned in and put her hand over his. "As far as I know." 

The question was right there, and he had to know. "How did you survive?"

She glanced away for a second, flinched and turned, and he realised that she'd accidentally turned towards the next cell. To the pile of bodies. He swallowed.

When she spoke, Cassandra's voice was distant and half-choked. While Percival had never exactly been the most sensitive of young men, it seemed the last week had drained away whatever better feelings he had left, because he couldn't make himself feel guilty for it. The de Rolos had come to this, had come down to just them, because they'd trusted rather than questioned.

"Mother told me to run, so I did. I hid in the secret passage in the North Tower for three days, then kept moving. I was going to try and escape, but I heard them talking about a prisoner and I thought-"

"I'm sorry." And he was, somewhere down under the numbness that had settled over him since the second potion had started its work. Or maybe the numbness came from elsewhere, and the potion was just letting him stand up while feeling it. Either way, he'd have time to untangle this all later. 

Cassandra looked like she'd been going to say something else, but shook her head instead. "No time," she said, and moved out of his reach.

The cloak was longer than he usually wore, and made of a fine, dark fabric. If Cassandra had been hiding in the North Tower, it must have come from Father's closet. Percival pulled it tighter around his throat. 

"Let me," he said, and shouldered the knapsack that Cassandra was struggling to lift. He staggered a little, and felt one of the partially-healed cuts open again, but he managed to follow as she lead the way. "Good heavens, are we taking half the Alabaster Sierras with us?"

"We'll need money," Cassandra said simply. "Follow me."

As they stepped out of the dungeon into the relatively fresh air of the passage beyond, Percival used the very last of his reserves of will not to look back.

* * *

Years later, he can still recall very little of that time. Most of the memories are dark or blurred, Ripley's face coming in and out of focus, sounds that no longer make sense echoing in his ears. He remembers that there was pain, but even the details of that have faded with time, as though all his memories have been cut into pieces and jumbled up in a bag.

But even now, he wakes up in a cold sweat sometimes at that last memory of Cassandra's face. Halfway down the hill, wading through the snowbanks to freedom, there had been a shout above them, thuds as something hit the trees to their right. He'd glanced back up at her, seen her startled expression fade into blankness, watched helpless as her body jerked with more impacts carrying her downwards. As he'd stood below her on the hillside, all he'd been able to see above the snowline were the feathered shafts, swaying gently as his sister's body settled into the drifts.

* * *

The dungeons of Stillben were about as salubrious as the rest of the town, although on the plus side, they'd thrown down some fresh straw before manacling him to the wall. On the downside, of course, was the fact that he was, in fact, manacled to the wall.

He wanted to catch his breath but didn't dare, the pain in his side flexing and sparking every time he moved, making him scared to draw in too much air. The rest of his body didn't feel much better, aching like one giant bruise from his twisted right ankle to the throbbing lump on his forehead. That was the injury that worried him the most, really, as he suspected it was responsible for the swirling lights that kept appearing in front of his eyes. 

He jerked awake, only realising he'd not been conscious when his head hit the wall behind him, hard enough to make sparks dance across his vision again. After two days, that was happening a little too much for his liking, the line between sleep and unconsciousness all too thin. Without thinking, he took a deep breath to try and clear his head, only for something caught fire across his ribs. 

Panting, struggling to balance the pain against his need to breathe, he forced himself to keep the frustration at bay. It wouldn't help at this point, when everything had already gone to the Nine Hells.

Ripley hadn't even known he was there. He'd got so close, and she hadn't even noticed. If he'd been able to stay further away, if he'd had something that would let him act from a longer distance.

If. If. If.

He'd heard her voice from inside the carriage, telling her guards to teach him a lesson, then the coachman's whip had cracked out, cutting across whatever he might have said before the first punch hit. After that, he mostly remembered pain and shouting and someone pulling the gun out of his numb fingers. He should have been quicker, and he should have been more careful, but just knowing she was there and within reach had brought a strange blankness to his mind, so that all he'd been able to think about was taking his shot and his revenge. And now that had been taken from him, along with everything else.

After all this time, he assumed his things were long gone, his only hope being that they hadn't recognised the weapon for what it was and just melted it down for the metal. There were days when he wasn't sure that even he should have it, let alone anyone else.

The pain in his side wasn't subsiding, confirming the suspicion that he'd done more than just bruise something. Between that and his head, he was fairly sure that falling asleep again was a very bad plan, although he wasn't entirely clear what he was staying awake for either. If he was careful, maybe he could just drift a little, not quite letting the darkness take him. It really was a lot of effort to keep his head up. Maybe if he just lay down for a moment.

Over the now-familiar scrape of metal on stone, the chains dragging across the floor as he slumped onto his side, he thought he heard something else. A soft, muffled sound like a swirling coat or a footstep on velvet. He tried to blink his eyes open, but that was an awful lot of effort for a half-heard, half-imagined sound. 

"Are you alive in there?"

The voice was soft, low and female, floating into the darkness and finally persuading him to open his eyes. He'd more or less adjusted to the dim torchlight by now, and in the gloom of the corridor outside his cell, one patch of darkness seemed to shift a little, resolving itself into a humanoid figure, wearing a long dark hooded cloak that hung low over her face. Although he was looking at her from a strange angle, he estimated she'd be about a head shorter than him. Beneath the deep hood, he could just make out pale skin framed by dark hair. 

"Cassandra?" His vision began to swim, and he didn't try to fight it, reality and imagination intermingling and choking the last of his breath out of him. If Cassandra was here now, who had it been before? Had there been a before? Or was this just a continuation of the same nightmare? Perhaps she wasn't dead after all, perhaps there had never been that moment on the hillside and somewhere, his sister was still alive. Or perhaps she was dead along with the all the others, her body decaying in the cell next to his, because he'd never left Whitestone at all. The hands on him, pulling at him, were just in his head, but the pain was all too real, rising up from his injured side on a tide of darkness that, this time, he let wash over him.

The warmth was a surprise, and it was only when it began to spread through his body that he realised how cold he was. Someone was trying to move him, to get him to stay upright, and a badly-placed push sent a throb of pain through his side. It was less than before though, down to an ache from the agony that had been there before, and the same sense of unrealness settled into him again. He'd been given a healing potion, the tingle of it still on his lips, just enough to bring him back to consciousness. His eyes still refused to focus properly, but when he took a shuddering breath, he expected to taste the decay and rot that refused to fade from his memory.

The surprise of smelling nothing but the relatively clean air of the Stillben dungeon startled him enough that he jerked back reflexively, finding the cold stone wall behind him and trying to get his eyes to focus.

"There you go, he's awake. Happy now? Can we go?" The voice was male this time, from somewhere on the other side of the cell, the speaker invisible in the shadows when he tried to peer into them. 

"You're all heart." That came from closer in, and was the woman again. He managed to turn his head to see her crouched at his side, most of her face still hidden by the hood. Without thinking, he lifted his hand towards her, the chain rattling as he pressed his palm to the side of her face.

"Are you real?" His voice wasn't much more than a rasp, and he coughed a little, wincing at the pain.

She laughed, not much more than a gentle huff of air. "Most of the time." Gently, she pulled his hand away and tilted her head to look at him properly. "Are you?"

"I'm not sure any more." Percival closed his eyes and let his head rest back against the wall. That, at least, seemed solid. "Who are you?"

"I think the man chained the wall is the one who should be answering the questions." That was the man again, his tone dry and unyielding. 

Matching it, Percival lifted his head and tried to make out the shape in the darkness. He didn't like talking to shadows. "My name is Percival Frederickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the third, and I'm here because I tried to kill the woman who murdered my family."

There was a long pause, and from the corner of his eye, he saw the woman beside him turn to the man in the gloom. Some kind of silent conversation took place between them, and the patch of shadow shifted in what was probably a shrug.

"Just because he says it doesn't make it true."

The woman blew out a long breath in what was probably irritation, although who it was aimed at, Percival couldn't tell. 

"He's got a point," he said, shifting to try and get at least half comfortable. "But if my things are still down here, I might be able to offer you more than just words."

This time it was the man who made a sound of annoyance, and it was definitely not directed at Percival. "Fine, if you want to waste our time on this." He shifted his attention, all business again. "We passed the guardroom on the way down. What am I looking for?"

"A large knapsack and a small, heavy, leather case. Feel free to rummage through either, but you do so at your own risk. Both have got a crest on them."

"Of course they have." The shadows moved again, and the woman turned back to Percival.

"Don't mind him. It's his job to be suspicious."

"And he should be. People don't end up in dungeons for no reason."

She frowned at that, and opened her mouth to speak again when something stopped her, and she reached up under her hood instead. "No," she said, and Percival had the strong impression she wasn't speaking to him. "It's fine. We'll be out soon."

Before he could ask, the darkness shifted and a man stepped out, so silent that if Percival hadn't been waiting for him, he would have jumped out of his skin. "Are these them?"

Neither his knapsack nor his gun case looked to have been tampered with, which was good. He'd emptied the gun trying to get at Ripley, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous.

"Yes." He nodded to the bag. "There's gold in there, if you can find it."

"And in the other?" 

Percival hesitated. He really did want to get out of here, and this was probably his only chance. At the same time, he wasn't about to give up all his secrets at once. He was still trying to work out how to phrase the answer when the woman put a hand on his arm. 

"We want to help you. _I_ want to help you," she said, correcting herself when the man snorted. "But you need to be honest with us."

Without thinking, Percival lifted the arm she was holding and pushed back her hood. Even in the dim light, there was no resemblance at all between her and Cassandra beyond their colouring. He was almost surprised at how much the disappointment hurt.

She blinked at him, startled, and without looking away, he said, "In the case is a weapon, a very powerful weapon, and unique. I built it myself. The coins are concealed in my ammunition bag, but the fake bullets need to be broken open to find them."

"What's a bullet?" When Percival looked over, he saw that the man already had one hand inside his knapsack, clearly rummaging around.

"You'll know it when you find it."

"Just give it to him," the woman said, gesturing for her companion to hand Percival his bag. 

"Be patient. I'll find it." 

In truth, Percival wasn't sorry to be left out of that one. The healing potion had helped, but there was still something dark threatening the corners of his vision, and he knew his hands were shaking too badly to be of much use.

As though reading his mind, the woman moved her hand down his arm, touching his hand lightly. Her skin felt so warm against his that it almost burned.

Across the cell, the man gave a grunt of triumph and held up the ammunition bag. "Is this is?"

Percival started to nod, regretted it, and said, "Yes. The ones on the top are metal. The bigger, softer ones underneath aren't. I'm sure the guards took my coin purse, but people can only steal gold if they know it's there." There was more hidden amongst his tools, and in various other boxes that he carried around with him, but his hopefully-rescuers weren't the only ones who needed to be cautious for now.

It took another few minutes for the man to fish one of the fake bullets out of the bag and break it open, but even in the torchlight, the gold glowed. Now that he'd pushed his hood back, Percival could see that he was a half-elf like the woman, and resembled her closely enough that they had to be siblings, possibly twins. He wondered if this was what others had seen when looking at the de Rolo children together, the family resemblance so strong it was unmistakeable. He closed his eyes against the nausea of memory, letting the swirls of black lick at the edges of his mind again. This was not the time to remember.

"Oi, what did you say your name was?" 

Percival opened his eyes to see both brother and sister looking over, calculating and concerned. "Percival Frederickstein von-"

"Great. Percy." The man held up the gold he'd managed to crack out of the fake, oversized bullets. "Coin only gets you so far, you understand?"

"I do. Although I'm not sure how far I can get at all at the moment."

His concerns were waved away. "We have a friend who can help with that. We'll get those locks undone and get you out of here for now. Then we'll talk. Deal?"

"Deal." He lifted his hand as though to shake on it, looking ruefully at the chain. "First things first?"

That got him a smile from the woman, and a roll of the eyes from the man, who came over, lock picks already in hand, only grumbling a little about taking in waifs and strays. 

Percival closed his eyes and let the man work, telling himself that this wouldn't be like last time, that he would make sure of it. When they hauled him to his feet, he carefully took the gun case from them and made sure it was securely fastened to his belt. Then with an arm slung over each of them, he let them drag him out of the dungeon and up into the swampy air of Stillben.

* * *

The camp is in a nice enough spot, cut into the slope of a hill with a cavern for shelter should they need it, but as it's a warm evening, everyone is planning on sleeping under the stars. It takes Percy - none of them but the Dragonborn are ever going to call him anything else, he realises - the better part of an hour to extricate the rest of the gold coins from their various hiding places, and by the time he's finished, he has a sizeable bag that makes a satisfying _clink_ when he hefts it.

Carefully, still a little wobbly on his newly-healed legs, he makes his way up to where Vex'ahlia is sitting, leaning against Trinket and apparently enjoying the last of the sun's heat as it sets.

"Here." Lowering himself to the grass opposite her, he passes over the bag. 

From the way she weighs it in both hands, he doesn't doubt that she knows exactly how much is in there already. "That's a lot of gold." Her tone is measured, cautious.

"All I've got." He smiles at her surprise. "Pike said you acted as treasurer, so I thought-" 

"I do," she says quickly, sitting up a little. "It's just that most of us have our own purses as well."

"Will there be any problem getting it back when I need it?" he asks, and she shakes her head. "Then you might as well hold onto it. I don't need much, just enough to make more ammunition, maybe build something new from time to time."

"What you've got is already quite something." There had been a spot of bother with bandits on the way out of Stillben, and his pepperbox had been quite effective at dealing with at least two of them. He'd promised to answer as many questions as he could in the morning, which at least gave him the evening to decide how much he wanted to say.

He shrugs. "I have some other ideas as well. But for now, you might as well hold onto it for me, don't you think?"

It's the right answer, because she smiles, tilting her head the way she'd done back in the cell, as though letting her get a better look at him. "I'd be happy to."

He finds his way back down to his bedroll on the edge of the group, on the other side to where the gnome cleric is fretting over her goliath friend, and out of earshot of the other gnome's snores. When he looks back up above the rise of the cave, he can see dark outlines against the dusk sky: the bulk of the bear; his twitching ears; the smaller shape of Vex sitting beside him; and beside her, the bow and quiver that she's set upright within reach, the feathers gently swaying in the light breeze.

He watches them until the shadows swallow them up.

* * *

  
_By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest._

Confucius


End file.
